We know you've been calling for this change for a while. We know that our names policy has been unclear, and this has led to some unnecessarily difficult experiences for some of our users. For this we apologize, and we hope that today's change is a step toward making Google+ the welcoming and inclusive place that we want it to be. Thank you for expressing your opinions so passionately, and thanks for continuing to make Google+ the thoughtful community that it is.﻿

This is simply a move made out of weakness and market failure. If G+ were challenging FB (or even other social nets), they wouldn't be making this change. After all, Google's revenue model is built completely on collecting and selling peoples' data.